ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Vladimir V. Napolskikh
Ural Federal University
Ekaterinburg, Russia
Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
under the President of the Russian Federation
Moscow, Russia

The Khakas-Altaian Mythonym Ker and the Proto-Yenissean Word for ‘Mammoth’. 2

Voprosy onomastiki, 2023, Volume 20, Issue 1, pp. 29–42 (in Russian)
DOI: 10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.1.002

Received on 10 January 2023
Accepted on 28 February 2023

Abstract: The article continues the research on the names of mammoth or other mammoth-like monsters as characteristic elements of the mythological onomasticon of some Siberian traditions (Turkic, Yenissean, Tungusic). In the first part of the article, the author identified a reconstructed Proto-Yenissean form *čer / *ťèkə́r ‘mammoth (giant horned fish)’ > Ket ¹tēľ ~ Yug ¹čel ~ Pumpokol *k^her (> Altaic, Khakass, Teleut ker, kär ‘a monster, especially a giant fish’) as a possible origin of these names. In this part, the author proposes a pre-Yenissean (Sino-Caucasian) etymology for it: *c̣HírV[ʁ]V (> North-Caucasian *c̣irVχV ‘caterpillar, snail; line’ ~ Sino-Tibetan *čaŋ ‘lizard’ ~ (?) Burushaski hargin ‘dragon, a monster that a snake turns into.’ It is assumed that the image of the mammoth-fish (as opposed to a more widely known and probably more ancient image of mammoth-bull) was formed in the Proto-Yenissean tradition after the speakers of the Yenissean proto-language migrated from the southern ancestral homeland to Siberia. It is based on ideas about the transformation of a snake, fish or similar chthonic animal into a giant dragon-like creature that existed among the Sino-Caucasian ancestors of the Yenisseans spread in the Pamir-Hindukush region, and was known to the ancient Chinese. The formation of the image of the mammoth-fish among the Yenisseans was also influenced by the Iranian motif of the “a belt dissecting a tree.” The Yenissean image of the mammoth-fish reached Siberia, particularly, it was borrowed into the shamanic tradition of the Evenks, which is evidenced by the possible etymology of the Evenki selī ‘mammoth’ (including mammoth-horned fish) from the reconstructed form of the unknown Yenissean language *seĺ (< *čer / *ťèkə́r).

Keywords: mammoth; etymology; mythology and folklore of Siberia; shamanism; Sino-Caucasian languages; Yenissean languages; Tungus-Manchurian languages; Evenki language; Turkic languages.

Acknowledgements
The research funding from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (Ural Federal University Program of Development within the Priority-2030 Program) is gratefully acknowledged.

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